FLC to Offer Gender Neutral Housing Story by Rachel Giersch Graphics by Michaela Goade Gender neutral housing is being adapted at many colleges and universities across the country, placing Fort Lewis College on a list of schools focused on this option for students. FLC student housing and conference services will be providing gender neutral housing beginning in Fall 2013. With gender neutral housing, students are able to request roommates of the opposite sex. More likely, a student will request another student they know, but students who do not have a specific roommate in mind will be accommodated and placed with a roommate who has also expressed interest in living within gender neutral quarters, said Julie Love, the FLC director of housing. Two main types of gender neutral housing currently exist: one where students are consolidated to specific areas on campus and one where students are not. The former is considered a theme oriented program. By consolidating students of the gender neutral housing option, schools believe more peer support, programmatic initiatives, and directed education within a community can create more camaraderie among the students, Love said. Providing the option for gender-neutral housing is a way to support students when the traditional, same-sex roommate paradigm doesn’t fit or isn’t appropriate, Love said. “I think gender-neutral housing could really serve our LGBT and transgendered students, but it could also serve students who just happen to have a best friend from high school who is of the opposite gender,” she said This will be an option available to students applying for housing as admitted freshmen this December and for the returning students applying to live on campus this January, she said. Because an average of 34 to 36 percent of the school’s population lives on campus every year, and two thirds of these students being freshmen, residential offerings must incorporate a diverse population of students, she said. The housing industry is changing, and it is responding to students who have made it clear that gender-neutral housing is a way to provide a comfortable and supportive environment for all students, Love said. “I think this housing option could be attractive to anyone, as the goal of living on campus in college is to be open and inclusive
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of everyone,” said Laura West, a second year resident advisor in Escalante Hall. “It lets you have another housing option, and it is such a positive step.” There’s no division based on how one identifies their self, West said. “I look forward to being able to answer students’ questions and help them to determine the best housing option for their specific needs,” said Laura Latimer, the assistant director of FLC’s residence life. After research was done last spring, the housing department decided not to use a programmatic methodology, and instead, the housing option will be spread out amongst apartments and suites, Latimer said. “Gender-neutral housing could be in any of the current housing options, such as a suite in the Adventure House or within the faculty in residence Animas housing,” said Love. According to the Association of College and University Housing Officers – International, a nationwide survey of their members, which includes more than 900 colleges and universities in 21 different countries, revealed that as of last spring, 21 percent of their members were offering some kind of gender-neutral housing option, she said. “Since the study, I have attended two conferences where it seemed more and more schools were figuring out the logistics of implementing a program,” Love said. Schools all over the nation, including Dartmouth, University of North Dakota, University of Chicago, Syracuse, University of California at Santa Barbara, and many other colleges and universities, have incorporated the gender-neutral housing option into their housing programs, she said. “We have students at Fort Lewis who helped make suggestions and be a part of the change, and I think knowing that students were involved here within our own student body makes me proud that we live in a campus that is responsive to its students,” Love said. Of the schools surveyed, the participation rate is between one and four percent, which is determined by the percentage of students living on campus, Love said. “Schools have not seen huge surges of popularity, but it has helped us to know what to expect,” she said. “We’re still unsure of what the participation rates could be.”